


After

by DeanRH



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 15x09 Coda, Coda, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:54:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22332232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeanRH/pseuds/DeanRH
Summary: Dean has lost everything.It wants to be found again.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 13
Kudos: 58





	1. Chapter 1

_How many times was he going to grieve Castiel?_

Dean lifted the bottle to his lips again, ignoring the whisky-sick on his tongue. _A punishment._ Booze always felt like a great idea at first, until the vomit and the throbbing headaches and everything in him ran dry.

He pushed past it. He deserved it. All of it.

_How many times was he going to apologize for not saying it? For not telling him? And for what? Some tired old idea of what it meant to be a man? Times change. Hell. Malls were closing everywhere and there was no such thing as a video arcade anymore either. So why was he still carrying around this shit idea of manliness like it hadn’t gone out of style with all those things years ago?_

_Then again, even in the 80s, dudes had long hair and wore makeup and scored all the time._

_No, this was a problem of Dean’s, and Dean’s alone, he’d inherited from a father whose interest in Led Zeppelin was the most progressive thing about him._

Dean just stared at the wall. He could still see his face, before he closed the lid of the box. Those baby blues.

“It’s all right, Dean,” said Cas, like his name was the only word that had ever mattered in the angel’s long existence, stretching across time.

He was still down there now, under a hundred tons of seawater. Battling the monster within. Maybe for eternity.

They could have been – they could have been.

If Dean had been braver.

If Dean had been _a strong man_ , like he pretended to be.

But face it – he’s a coward. All the gruffness in the world wouldn’t change that. Couldn’t. Talking in a voice like Batman and drinking yourself sick because you can’t tell someone you love them doesn’t make you a man.

Dean felt his stomach roiling again. He drank anyway. He wiped away wetness from his eyes he would’ve sworn weren’t tears.

_Cas,_ said his brain without his permission. A prayer, in the way that name had always been a prayer for him.

_Cas._ There it was again. Like hope, like a heartbeat. _Cas, I love you. I’m in love **with** you. I’m so sorry I couldn’t say it. You deserved to hear me say it. I love you. I love you. I love – _

Dean’s chest hitched on a sob, and he put the bottle to his lips again, and drank.

Eventually, he blacked out.

***

In the murky depths, a hollow boom sounded. Nightmare fish quicksilvered away from it.

Like an earthquake. Like a tsunami. Like a natural disaster.

Like an act of God.

The sound repeated, echoing in the deep.

And then, something cracked.

The lid of the box swung open.

The figure of a man climbed out, floating in the deep.

He stared up at the surface, miles above his head.

Even here, his eyes were a bright, unearthly blue, like the surface of the sea.

Which was exactly where he was headed.

He was going home.

Dean was waiting.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean woke up.

He immediately wished he hadn’t.

A groan bubbled out of his chest as lights flashed in front of his eyes and his head felt heavy and delicate at once, like glass, like a fishbowl.

He blinked a couple of times, and then tried to move. His limbs screamed in agony.

“Hell,” he muttered, and the word came out on a croaked growl. “What’d I do?”

“ _Jesus, Dean!_ ” Sam’s shout of horror slammed through him like a physical shockwave.

“Keep it down, Sammy,” Dean managed, or he thought he said something like it.

Then he was being gathered up in his baby brother’s arms and bridal carried to the bathroom, where he unceremoniously set Dean underneath the showerhead and turned on the spray.

“Augh!” Dean shouted, and then leaned forward to puke between his knees.

“Real nice,” Sam said, a sour note in his voice.

He shoved a bottle of water at Dean, who took it gratefully and drank, wincing as he leaned his head back.

Sam swam into his vision, a moose in a lake.

“Dean,” said Sam. “What the hell? I thought you were dead.”

“I can hold my liquor, Sammy,” Dean grumbled. Sam’s eyebrows shot up.

“Dude, there was _puke everywhere_ ,” he said. “You just threw up again! What are you trying to do, kill yours – “

Sam stopped talking. Dean hated, _hated_ how the look on his face went from pissed-off brother to Oh You Poor Dear Thing.

“Do you want to talk about – “

“No! I don’t want to talk!” Dean shouted, and then grabbed his head in regret.

_And this? This is **exactly** why everybody leaves you, Dean. _

The angel’s voice from years ago echoed in his head. He couldn’t argue. He no longer wanted to.

“’M sorry, Sammy,” finally squeezed out of his throat, and he hated saying it, wanted to take it back after it had passed his lips, but he pushed on. “I just – we lost him, Sam.”

The tears that were there, and the sobs that came after, Dean could blame on the hangover, on the booze, on just about anything but the real reason.

But he was done blaming other things.

When his brother knelt down to hug him, the water drenching them both, Dean didn’t push him away and sobbed into his shoulder like a widow.

A few hours later, after eating and having coffee, showered and wrapped in his robe, Dean was feeling a little closer to human again.

He looked at his brother, who came through and brought him some orange juice.

“Thanks,” he said, and he meant it. “For everything.”

“Anytime,” said Sam, sitting down across from him with the laptop.

“Sam.”

Sam looked up from the computer.

“I want to talk. About it. I – I want to talk.”

Sam stared at him.

“Do I need to get the silver knife?”

“Shut up.”

“Sorry,” Sam said, with a little huff and a smile. “Okay, I’m listening.”

Dean cleared his throat. He stared blankly up at the staircase leading outside, unsure where to begin, or even how.

“Cas is – He’s – “ Dean said. _Fits and starts, but it’ll get the engine going. Keep on moving._ “Cas is important to me.”

“I know,” said Sam. “He’s important to me, too.”

“No,” Dean said. “I mean, yeah. But not like I mean it – I mean. He’s – “

_Everything_

_Everything_

_Everything_

_The beginning and the end of the universe_

_Of my universe_

_They say we’re made of starstuff_

_But he really is_

“ – important,” Dean finished lamely, wondering at the poetry in his head. Could he say it aloud? Could he say it to Sam?

Could he have said it to Cas?

Sam was waiting expectantly for something more than these few sentences.

“You’ve been acting weird since Cas took the Mark of Abel,” said Sam. “But. I kinda knew already. I mean, you _actually killed yourself_ the last time he was gone.”

“That was for a case!” Dean protested.

Sam gave him exactly the kind of look he expected. Dean sighed. Even he couldn’t fight the mountain of bullshit, and he was the one who’d put the mountain there in the first place.

“Okay,” said Dean. “Okay.”

He stared at Sam, lips pursed, giving him a strange look like he was going into battle.

Sam raised an eyebrow.

“What are you – “

“I’minlovewithCasSam,” Dean said in a rush.

There was a beat.

There was another.

Sam completely failed to look impressed or surprised.

He looked at Dean like Dean had just told him that water was wet.

“Yeah!” Dean said, a little derailed by this odd lack of response on his brother’s part. “He’s my – he’s my everything. My goddamn sea and sky, okay?”

“Who are you angry at?”

“I’m not angry!”

Sam, at this point, was clearly having difficulty holding something in, since his lips kept quirking up at the edges.

“What is so funny?”

“Dean,” said Sam. “I think you’re the last to know.”

Dean felt like a bolt of lightning had struck the map table between them.

“Wha – “ Dean began. Then he narrowed his eyes. “If you knew, why didn’t you tell me?”

Sam threw his hands in the air.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s not get off track here. Now that you know, and you’re willing to say it out loud, what do you want to do about it?”

Dean leaned back in his chair.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s not like we can haul him back out of there, Sam. We don’t even know exactly where he is. And it doesn’t solve the problem, does it? This old damn story. Cain and Abel. Darkness and light, blah blah.”

He sighed.

“I’m just sad I never got to tell him,” said Dean.

Sam gave him a knowing smile.

“I think he knew,” he said.

The way had been long and dark.

The weight of the water heavy.

Finally, finally, his head had broken the surface, after a long and weary march through the strange unexplored deep and the creatures that lived there.

The mark on his arm glowed dully in the night.

The place where Chuck had been sealed away, just as the Darkness had been sealed away on Dean’s arm once upon a time. Opposites, but the same, in the end.

There was no moon.

He felt the cold wet of the sand on the beach beneath his bare feet.

There, beyond the white line of the beach, was the road.

And the road was something Castiel understood.

Dean had taught him.


	3. Chapter 3

_“You really think that’s a good idea? Last time Cas got all juiced up, he went evil!”_

_“This isn’t the Mark of Cain, Dean. It’s not evil.”_

_“Yeah, well, why can’t I take it?”_

_“Because the Mark of Cain is evil.”_

_“Fine. Okay. So this, Mark of Abel, then. What’s the point of that? Dude got offed by his brother.”_

_“I think it’s the rule of opposites,” said Sam. “Abel was the brother favored by God. So the Mark of Abel can contain him, like the Mark of Cain contains the Darkness.”_

_“And when Cas tried to be God, he went nuts,” said Dean. “No. No way. There’s gotta be something else.”_

_“There’s nothing else, Dean,” said Sam. “And we’re running out of time.”_

So they did it. Just like all the other stupid, suicidal shit they’d done before.

And just like Dean had predicted, trying to hold in all that power turned Cas upside down. It had been a gamble, in a dude whose power-hungry tendencies were like an addiction, like Sam with demon blood or Dean with booze.

They all had their failings.

Dean, in his heart of hearts, would argue that his own failing lie not so much in his alcoholism but the reason for it. Too goddamned stubborn to push a few words out past his lips.

Not so badass after all, he thought.

“Got a vampire nest out in the next town over,” said Sam, walking in with his duffel bag. “You want to check it out?”

“Nah,” said Dean. “Still not feelin’ great.”

“That’ll happen when you drink a gallon of whisky,” said Sam.

“C’mon,” said Dean. “It wasn’t a _gallon._ ”

“Could’ve fooled me,” said Sam. “This is the fourth time this week you’ve turned me down. And you were always the one who wanted to hunt.”

“Guess I’m not feelin’ it,” said Dean.

“Yeah, well, you’re gonna have to start _feelin’ it_ again soon,” said Sam. “There are too many of them out there. I can’t do this alone.”

“Exactly, Sam!” said Dean, startled at his own voice. “ _Four times this week!_ That’s a lot, even for us! Things are getting crazy out there.”

Sam sighed, and his shoulders drooped.

“Maybe Lucifer was right – “

“Don’t say it.”

“That whatever we alter, we always end up here,” said Sam. “Whether it’s monsters or Croats or – or global warming, I don’t know. We never seem to get a break.”

“That ship sailed a long time ago, Sammy,” said Dean. “Get outta here. Vamps ain’t gonna behead themselves.”

“Okay,” said Sam, and looking sadder than he had in a long time, he went up the stairs slowly, his heavy footsteps clanging on every one.

The door squeaked open and groaned closed. It echoed into the emptiness.

Dean hung his head. Then he looked around himself.

He really couldn’t stand the bunker. He’d already been buried underground once. He didn’t live here by choice. He lived here for Sam’s benefit. If he couldn’t have the apple-pie life, then he could at least give it to Sam. Or an approximation of it.

Thing was, he wasn’t sure he wanted an apple-pie life either. One of those things, like shower sex, that sounds great in theory but is complicated in practice.

Sometimes, we want things that are wrong for us.

And sometimes, we can’t see what’s right, until it’s too late.

Because society, because history, because.

Right now, all of those reasons crumbled and faded away, like burning paper, like burning bones.

Dean wasn’t even lying to Sam. That would have taken effort and interest.

No.

He was just listless, floating through life like a river.

He hoped an alligator got him.

Dean didn’t care about hunting.

He didn’t care about anything at all.

He wasn’t angry or sad. In fact, if there was such a thing as the opposite of emotions, that’s what he was feeling.

Nothing.

He was numb.

Under cover of darkness was the safest way for him to move.

Nobody suspected the lone, dark shadow of a man, walking restless along the highways.

Nobody noticed him, bare feet caked in mud and blood, eyes unblinking.

The mark now glowed consistently, instead of fading in and out like a heartbeat.

It wasn't red, like Dean's mark had been. It was bright blue, like his grace.

Like his eyes.

Castiel didn’t know what that meant.

He didn’t care.

There was a sign, lit up by the passing headlights of vehicles on the highway.

_Lebanon, 200 Miles._

In the darkness, Castiel's lips stretched in a rictus grin of too-white teeth.


	4. Chapter 4

Dean walked through the bunker in stockinged feet. He’d just finished another Western he hadn’t even paid attention to. He felt like he was moving through molasses.

He went to the coffee machine and reached into the cupboard for the coffee.

He took out a mug.

He watched the dark liquid pour into the cup and the steam rise.

Everything was like this, now.

One thing after another after another.

Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

He left the kitchen and walked through the dining hall.

**_Boom. Boom._ **

Two echoing knocks on the door of the bunker.

“Forget your keys again, Sammy?” he said to himself, looking up.

The years of practice, honing his instincts as a hunter, meant that he recognized the hairs raising on the back of his neck before he understood why they were there.

_That’s not Sam,_ whispered something inside him.

Dean felt his heart clench. His face prickled with pain, a strange biological response he’d always had to fear. Fear was good. It sharpened him, made him into the knife he was today.

He realized he had been staring up at the door, standing at the edge of the hall where it met the war room, holding the coffee in a death grip.

He wondered why the knocks had not been repeated.

He was not stupid enough to think he had imagined them.

“ _Deeeeaaaaannnnn…_ ”

Dean recoiled.

His blood ran cold.

He knew that voice.

He did not know that voice.

“ _Deaaaannn…let me inside. It’s cold._ ”

Dean’s mind flashed on Faust.

The monkey’s paw.

He’d spent a lifetime pretending he wasn’t the nerd he was, underneath the leather jacket and cheap cologne and cheaper quips. He actually _loved_ research. He loved to read.

But that wasn’t badass, so he hid it.

He remembered the story.

_They come back…wrong._

He hissed, suddenly registering the heat from the mug, and set it down on the table, shaking his burned hand.

“ _I know you can hear me, Dean. Let me inside._ ”

A strange chuckle.

“ _Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? Me inside you?_ ”

In spite of himself, Dean felt heat rush to his cheeks.

_“I can hear your thoughts, Dean. Your longing. I’m here. You just have to let me in._ ”

The voice was sweet now, cajoling.

Dean stared at the door.

He tried to make his mind as blank as possible.

**“ _LET ME IN!”_** roared Castiel, raining blows on the other side of the door.

Dean flinched, but didn’t respond.

He didn’t pray. Who could he pray to?

But he cleared his thoughts and clenched his fists by his side.

The traitor thought drifted across his consciousness anyway.

_How long will it take him to remember that he has a key?_

Silence.

Dean squeezed his eyes shut.

The lock clicked.

The door swung open.

Dean had a glimpse of Castiel, framed in the doorway, a rainstorm behind him, grinning like a madman in every horror film he’d ever seen, whites of his eyes blinding, the irises a spark of blue, and beneath the fabric of the trenchcoat he saw the Mark of Abel glowing so brightly it was visible through all the layers he was wearing.

In that first second, Castiel’s hungry, wild gaze landed on him.

In the next, Dean turned and ran.


	5. Chapter 5

“Why bother running, Dean? I always know _exactly_ where you are. I _always_ come when you call.”

That strange chuckle again.

_It’s not Cas. It’s not Cas._

Dean breathed, trying to calm his heartbeat, as he flattened himself against the wall.

“Of _course_ it’s Cas, Dean! Don’t you recognize my voice?”

Castiel clicked his tongue, _tsk tsk tsk._

“I’m disappointed,” he said. “I thought you _loved me._ ”

He was walking slowly.

Unhurried, like he knew there was nothing Dean could do.

“I heard you, down in that _box_ you locked me in,” Cas said, trailing his fingers along the wall. “Well. _Cas_ heard you. But that’s the same thing, these days. Isn’t it?”

Cat and mouse.

Only there was no question of who was winning.

Dean couldn’t win. He knew that.

No weapons.

Nowhere to run.

Dean turned into the hallway to face him.

Castiel saw him and grinned wider somehow.

“ _There_ you are,” he said. “Not that I didn’t know. But it’s good to see that you’re beginning to understand things around here.”

“You sure love to play with your toys,” said Dean. “You got a bad habit of breaking them when you get bored.”

“What? Toys like Cas?” he laughed, approaching Dean and getting right in his face. “He wasn't meant to last! You’re supposed to be a _ladies’ man_ , Dean, that’s how I _wrote you!_ ”

“Yeah, well,” said Dean. “They say there ain’t nothin’ gayer than the way Ian Fleming wrote James Bond.”

Cas’s face was always excellent at forming both threat and anger. Now, with someone else behind those eyes, the terror of that fury curdled Dean’s blood.

“ _You were supposed to be the perfect man!_ ” bellowed Castiel. “And then you go and fall in love! Not with Anna, the angel you were _supposed_ to fall in love with. Not with the woman I gave you! Tell me, do you even think about Lisa and Ben anymore?”

Dean started to get an inkling of an idea.

He was a hunter, after all.

“You’re always puttin’ me an’ Sam into some straight-up rapey situations,” said Dean. “That what does it for ya, _Chuck_?”

Castiel recoiled as if he had been punched in the face.

“You _wouldn’t do as I said!_ ” he shouted. “I kept throwing women at you, at _both_ of you! Sam’s better at doing as he's told, but then what does Sam know about bodily autonomy? He hasn't learned much about it with you as a brother, that's for sure.”

“Shut up,” said Dean, thinking fast.

His brain short-circuited when Cas crowded him up against the wall and nuzzled his cheek.

“But you wanted _this_ form,” whispered Cas, his stubble dragging against Dean’s, a slight burn he might’ve loved in any other circumstance. “Your god is a jealous god. Will you accept me, if I look like this?”

“ _Gross,_ ” said Dean, disgusted, turning his face away. “Lilith was right. You _do_ have some kind of weird obsession with me.”

“Because _you’re mine,_ Dean,” snarled Castiel’s voice, “I _made_ you.”

“Yeah well, funny thing about making things with _free will_ ,” said Dean, his eyes squeezed shut, his face turned to the side. “They don’t always do what you want.”

He felt Castiel’s large hands cup his face, and turn him away from the wall.

Dean couldn’t have resisted, not unless he wanted his neck snapped.

He stared into cold blue eyes.

_That isn’t Cas,_ said the same thing inside him that told him the knock on the door wasn’t Sam.

But then –

There, in the background –

There was a flicker of something.

Brief, but shining.

_Heaven’s greatest strategist._

_Castiel, Angel of Thursday._

_Guinea pigs and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches._

_“Just so you know…why I can’t help.”_

_Everything, with Castiel, was communicated in his eyes._

And those wheels that had been turning in Dean’s mind suddenly had the missing piece that set them churning in earnest.

“Who created you?”


	6. Chapter 6

Castiel blinked.

“Little late for Sunday school questions, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Just answer the question,” said Dean.

Castiel didn’t respond.

“Because here’s the thing,” Dean said, moving forward suddenly, Castiel disengaging from him.

Not backing away, not yet.

But now there was a hair’s breadth of distance between them.

And a hint of…doubt?

“If Cas can hear _my_ thoughts, then he can hear yours too,” said Dean. “And that means he can hear _me._ But that goes against your plans, right? And if you’re really _God,_ like you say, then nobody could mess with you? Right?”

Castiel actually took a step back at that.

“So I’m gonna ask you again,” said Dean. “Who made you, Chuck? Or do you even know? Because you’d have more control. If you were.”

“Nobody created me!” shouted Chuck. “I _made_ you! I made all of this!”

“Sure,” said Dean. “And there’s a galaxy out there. But there’s a universe, too. Who’s the universe, Chuck? Who created you?”

Suddenly, Chuck was standing next to Castiel.

“Dean,” said Castiel, his mouth forming the small smile he knew best.

Dean felt warm inside.

“Cas,” he acknowledged.

“What just happened?!” cried Chuck.

The two of them turned on him.

“Doubt,” said Dean. “Ain’t it a bitch.”

“You can’t do that!”

“We just did,” said Castiel. “And this Mark is supposed to represent _good_.”

The mark on his arm was still glowing.

“But you’ve aligned yourself with evil,” said Dean. “Puppetmasters are evil, by your own rules.”

“And what you did was evil.”

"Everything in the world you write has an opposite," said Dean. "Yin and yang. Guess you think it's _literary symmetry_ or some shit. But Cas reminded me." 

"How could Cas do anything? I was in control!" 

"Sweetheart, you ain't _never_ been in control of Cas," said Dean. "That's part of why I love him so much. But all this Cain and Abel, light and darkness, yin and yang shit? Means that if Sam's doubt defeated him, _your doubt defeats you_." 

"And what kind of God doubts himself?" asked Cas.

Chuck started to flake away and turn to dust.

“No!” he screamed. “You can’t do this to me! _I’m God!_ ”

“Seems like someone can,” said Dean, as he faded into nothingness.

The mark vanished from Cas’s arm.

And a rift opened in front of them.

The walls of the bunker were fading out, like an old celluloid film.

“Dean?”

The sound of his brother opening the door and hurrying down the stairs.

“Down here, Sam! Hurry it up.”

Sam came around the corner.

“What happened? What’s that?”

“No time to explain, Sammy,” said Dean.

He looked his brother square in the eye.

“Do you trust me?”

Sam nodded.

“Of course,” he said. “I always have.”

“Then c’mon,” he said. “Before we’re out of time.”

He put his hand in Castiel’s.

Castiel smiled at him.

The three of them walked through the rift, as the world behind them faded away into nothingness.

“We were always trying to fight against heaven and hell, monsters and demons,” said Dean. “Fighting the system. But we needed to leave the whole system behind.”

Light glowed from the rift behind them, illuminating their footsteps.

“Team Free Will,” said Sam.

“Do you know where we’re going?” asked Castiel, as they walked further into the darkness.

“No idea,” said Dean. “We'll find other, better stories to be a part of, to live in. But that's not the most important thing.”

"Which is?" asked Sam. 

Dean smiled. 

"We're going there together." 


End file.
